Well, kids, here we are at the end of my trip and my final blog, which is keeping me occupied while in transit.

I think the last time I wrote I was in Saigon and had spent the day wandering around, shopping (trying to find a pair of thongs in my size in Asia is not an easy task!) and trying to avoid death by road crossing. When I was in Napoli, I remember thinking how insane crossing the road was but I was ill-prepared for the complete bedlam that is traffic in Vietnam. You also have to remember to look both ways while crossing the whole road as there are often one or two motorbikes driving on the wrong side of the road. Anyway, on Saturday, I went on a tour out to the Cao Dai Temple where they had a midday ceremony thing. I felt a bit awkward being a tourist at someone else's religious ceremony so I didn't stay very long. Nearby there were monkeys which I found very exciting. Then we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels where we got to see lots of war paraphernalia, including the very terrifying booby-traps. I got to fire a M60 machine gun. I have no idea where my bullets went so best if I stay away from firearms from now on. Someone told me they went high of the target. Then we crawled through the tunnel which was pretty fun and was "tourist-sized" which means it was twice the size of the original ones where they went through on their bellies. It's pretty humid in there and I was very sweaty and filthy when I got out. Finally we watched a propaganda video for the Viet Coms which spent a lot of time praising people for being "American killers".

I spent Sunday travelling to Nha Trang on the bus. I booked a sleeper seat which was evidently not built for westerners as my legs didn't fit. Lucky I wasn't actually trying to sleep in it. It was quite a nice day and I got to see more of the Vietnamese country side, which was nice. The only disappointment was stopping for lunch, ordering noodle soup and receiving a block of two-minutes floating in water! That was the only bad meal I had in Vietnam. Anyway, I arrived in Nha Trang and found my hostel then went for a drink at the attached pub and met some people.

Had a nice slow day on Monday, arranged some things, then just hung out at the beach and went for a massage. I had intended on going for several more massages in Vietnam but as I managed to sunburn the crap out of my back on Tuesday, that really didn't happen. Monday night was at the pub.

On Tuesday I went on a boat trip around the islands which was a pretty good day out. Did some snorkelling and swimming, some lying on beaches and not a whole lot else. They somehow managed to produce a massive Vietnamese feast in the teeny tiny boat kitchen so lunch was fantastic. Tuesday night at the pub as usual, but I went home fairly early as I was starting my diving course on Wednesday.

Spent Wednesday doing the theory and confined water diving parts of my diving course. My poor little brain felt a bit stretched as it hadn't had to do anything for the past 5 months, but I enjoyed it and the confined water dive in the Nha Trang Navy Base pool was fun. Wednesday night, we ventured to a different pub.

Thursday was my first two open water dives, which were fantastic. I had to do my dives skills at the start of the dives and I had a very hilarious moment when I was attempting to get back into my weight belt, rolled over and came eye-to-eye with three clown fish looking very unimpressed with me. I was also getting a bit distracted looking at things and had to keep reminding myself to pay attention to my instructor when he was telling me to do things.On the second dive, I managed to kick a sea-urchin right at the start and now have sea-urchin lodged in my foot. I was wondering if I would have to declare that in customs when I get back tomorrow. That made the second dive more painful than the first but it was still very cool. We saw a cuttle who was glowing blue and white. He was the coolest find of the trip and he hung around for quite a while so we got a very good look at him. They gave us lunch on the boat, which was again extremely good and I can only marvel at how the guy cooks in the kitchen on the boat. I complain about the size of my kitchen. Thursday night was, once again, at the pub (or pubs as the case may be) and I, once again, had to go home pretty early to look over a couple of things for the final exam. Plus I was pretty tired from diving all day.

Friday was also two open water dives. The visibility was a fair bit crappier than on Thursday and my favourite find of the day was a wart-slug of some kind. I had to do more skills, so that took up a lot of my dive time. Lunch was good again, apart from the cockroach that found its way into my beef stir-fry and into my mouth. I managed to pull it out before I chewed it, however. One of the other dive instructors on the boat, a welsh boy named Chris, and I became friends and had a hilarious chopstick battle over the last spring roll (anyone seen Kung Fu Panda?). He was declared the winner when the spring roll ended up on the floor and I surrendered it. Back on shore and I had to do the final exam for my open water dive licence. I managed to get the first question wrong by not reading it properly and got everything else right after that. So I am now a qualified open water diver. I spent the rest of the afternoon/dinner/drinks with Chris, his girlfriend Steffi and a couple of his friends and then went on to find my hostel friends at another bar.

On Saturday I had to get up early (and by that I mean at 8.45) to go on an easy rider tour that I booked and then regretted, given that we got home at 4.30am that morning. Anyway, I went and the first stop was at the waterfalls. It might have been nice if someone had mentioned to me that it involved some fairly serious rock clamouring to get the waterfalls. If they had mentioned that then I possibly wouldn't have gone with a hangover and in my thongs. Anyway, managed to get to the waterfalls and have a bit of a swim, while my driver played with my camera. On the way back to the bike, I slipped and sliced my foot open on a rock so I spent the rest of the day hobbling around in my now blood-stained thongs. That made the rest of the day suck a bit. Anyway, after the waterfalls, I went to Monkey Island where I got some lunch. I was presented with the entire back half of a fish (bones, fins etc attached), a pair of chopsticks and a fork. Needless to say, I made a bit of a mess of it but it was a good meal. When I got to the bit with all the monkeys, the alpha male made himself known pretty much immediately and was keeping a very close eye on me while I was walking. I got to a section of the path with about 5 or 6 females, all with babies, all hanging around the path and stopped to watch them for a bit (alpha male still hanging around me). I decided to move on and took one step further along the path when the male jumped straight over to me, first looked up my skirt, then grabbed my skirt with both hands, pulled me backwards and bared his teeth at me. Monkey road block. So I had to go back the other way and didn't get to see the second half of the island. Came back to Nha Trang past the Cham Towers which were pretty cool, except I couldn't go inside as I was wearing a short skirt. I sort of had two dinners on Saturday night, one with hostel people then one with Chris and Steffi and some dive people and then rejoined my hostel friends for a few drinks (much quieter than Friday night!). We all had to be up early on Sunday so we all went back to the hostel not long after midnight. Three of the four of us left today so we did the goodbye thing then I went to the airport for my three back-to-back flights. The first flight of the day was delayed by two hours. Not a good start but I luckily had built a long enough gap into my itinerary that it really didn't matter too much. Anyway, I get to spent the rest of the day either on a plane or in an airport. I'll probably be home by the time most of you read this so see you all soon.

Love, hugs.

OMG Flight is boarding NOW!